UPDATE (October 7, 2009):
This post didn’t quite generate the type of questions I was hoping for, and because of that I’m not able to generate a knowledgeable and informed response that would be overtly useful. However, I will leave this topic open for the next little while in the hopes some more questions can be generated. It is entirely possible I haven’t been specific enough in my request for the type of questions I’d like to answer, so here goes.
I’m looking for questions related to Asterisk implementation issues, specifically related to problems in the dialplan or /etc/asterisk configuration. For example, a good question might be proposed as;
“I have a call center solution I’m building, and I’ve been unable to get the member status to be consistently accurate. Here are the relevant parts of my configuration currently, and the console output of my mostly correct but inaccurate status. Thanks!”
Hopefully this helps to clear up any confusion I may have generated by the generally asked topic of Ask the Expert, and will lead to better questions and a fruitful article in the future. Thanks!
I figured that due to my limited time to write blog posts, and my intent to try and write at least one blog post a week, I’d do a simple “Ask the Expert” type of article. I’ll take 5 of your questions and answer them in a blog post later this week (hopefully on Thursday). So if you have some particular problem you’re trying to get solved, or have a question about implementation, now would be a a great time to get the answer you’re looking for.
Ideally you’ll ask questions related to Asterisk 
I tend to specialize in queues and database integration, so those are the realms you’ll probably get the most indepth answer. Or if you just have a problem you’re trying to solve in dialplan that you can’t quite get to work, let me know, as I love creating clever dialplans.
What’s the best way to make outbound calls from certain extensions change their caller ID name to the company name?
Is it possible to do hot-desking between Asterisk servers? How?
By hot-desking I mean that a person can login with their extension to a phone on one Asterisk server, logout and then login (with the same extension) to a phone on another Asterisk server. The Asterisk servers are all internal or connected together and the person will get their calls no matter which phone/server they are currently using.
I consider the Codec Negotiation Patch by Sippy Software http://www.rtpproxy.org/wiki/AsteriskCodecNegotiationPatch
a valuable patch to eliminate unnecessary resource transcoding wastage and G.729 codec provisioning. This patch has been properly submitted and kept up to date so why has it not been implemented?
Are there some architectural issues and should I not use it?
What would be really nice is some form of a location parameter that is assigned to a peer with a location to location codec choice matrix.
Thanks
Mike
From twitter:
@oej: @leifmadsen How do I get a lamp on my phone to light up if ONE member of a group, anyone, is available?
How come a soft phone has no trouble registering and communicating across a voiptunnel yet an ATA on the same network is unable to register?
This isn’t really an appropriate type of question, as the problem isn’t general enough to be useful for lots of people. This is a specific implementation problem on your network.
In addition, I wouldn’t be able to solve the issue due to a lack of information.
Can you add 2 extra Special Characters for Pattern Matching
so it is easier to match text
“T” matches any lower + UPPER case letter
“?” matches any digit from 0-9 + lower + UPPER case letter
a different possibility is to support regx
also how do I make an IVR that matche 1-X digits at the moment I have to make 2 entryes _X & _X. as _X! will not wait for the timeout
exten => _[0-9a-zA-Z][0-9a-zA-Z][0-9a-zA-Z]!,(“Match a 3+ char”)
exten => _!,1,NoOP(“match anything – This give a warning”)
(future possibility)
exten => _TTT!,1,NoOP(“Match a 3+ char – Future option”)
exten => _?!,1,NoOP(“Match any 3+ string – Future option”)
While these are good ideas, I’m not a developer, and this is beyond the scope of my article
I’m interested in finding out which higher ed institutions have successfully migrated to a full Asterisk implementation. I’m aware of Sam Houston. I’m specifically interested in smaller colleges using distributed architecture with multiple servers.